The #1 Reason People Regret Their Relationships - Dr Shannon Curry

getting married is just choosing one person's faults over another is that right did I say that you said that I know that is from uh somebody who works with the ganss but uh yeah essentially the grass is always greener on the other side so I find that incredibly freeing as soon as we realize that um we are going to be living with somebody who has a lot of faults and can we tolerate those faults and can they tolerate ours then you are uh starting on solid it's an interesting thing you're looking at a familiar type of discomfort and the deal that you're really trading it for is not familiar discomfort for unfamiliar Comfort but familiar discomfort for unfamiliar discomfort exactly I ex that's very well said give me an example uh you have a partner that is not quite as tender as you might like they're not uh as loving you staring at the night sky you really wish they would say something High flown and thoughtful uh but they they start singing a song that they heard yesterday or or or playing a tune or something like that or they you know they make a joke uh and you think I just really want somebody that's so deep and does you know he there and then you decide to switch for another partner and you're at a party and your previous partner would have been you know really involved in the conversation it would have made you given you something that you could have bonded over but at the new party with the new partner this this partner sort of needs your attention all of the time and and don't they don't really allow you to connect so you have certain elements of discomfort traded for other elements of discomfort one person is phenomenal to watch movies with because they don't interrupt and they just like to sit there and be calm but the next person that you bring along is really interesting and engaging when you have conversations about stuff that fires you up and you end up making these trades there is there are no Solutions only tradeoffs there are only trade-offs and although I do believe um that Tai tashiro a psychologist and researcher came up or really identified three key qualities that can make it easier so if a person has these three key qualities really this sets the groundwork for having an easier time managing these set of problems because there's so much good there to make up for it and those things aren't necessarily what we t hope we usually shoot for um they're more solid and it makes sense if you're trying to be with somebody for years and years um and you're going to be living with them every day and all of their idiosyncracies can you say that word for me idiosyncrasies idiosyncrasies I think so it's it's one extra syllable I keep putting in there so idiosyncrasies essentially you want somebody who's solid and who is consistently reminding you of what a decent wonderful human being they are so that those idiosyncrasies fall away and aren't the central Focus whereas if somebody is really cool or goodlooking or kind of witty that might help a little bit but if they are self-absorbed or unkind then whatever other issues you trade it off for are going to be really glaring and staring at you in the face dig into that a little bit more for me what did he find so tit toiro he actually looked at first of all uh he realized that people who stayed together for the most part the large proportion of them are chronically unhappy and there's a a small minority who are actually they stay married long term and they report a high level of satisfaction not only in their partnership but in their sex lives and it can actually increase with age and so out of that small minority he wanted to know are there any correlates are there any qualities you know he looked at personality he looked at race he looked at age he looked at all sorts of demographics of how they came together and there were actually Three core personality traits that he found represented more than others and those were conscientiousness number one flexibility number two really low neuroticism is what we call it so it's not a neurotic person this person's pretty easygoing flexible um and then the third is low to moderate adventurousness and I always say to my clients on this because I'm constantly advising my clients on this this doesn't mean they don't want to hike or travel everybody likes to hike and travel I mean I don't really like to hike but everybody has some adventurousness in the traditional sense but if you think of those of us who are constantly looking at new shiny things um that's high adventurousness and high adventurousness might mean that you are constantly starting new projects or running a business and you constantly have new ideas uh it can also mean that you're constantly attracted to new exciting people doesn't mean you're going to cheat it just means that you are somebody whose focus is constantly wandering and um it can be very difficult to get your focus and attention which diminishes intimacy and connection at home so you can understand why you'd actually want somebody who is really just easygoing um The Rock uh they they focus on their family they constantly understand what's important they uh you know they just are satisfied with a simpler life and I happy to say my husband is that way you just need one person who has these qualities by the way um because usually the incredibly conscientious flexible um solid grounded person is also much more tolerable and um forgiving so it works out for both parties what is flexible in this context because neuroticism for me in the classic big five is sort of predisposition to low affect low mood Etc but right I I know lots of people who have a tendency toward low mood that make pretty great partners and I would also describe as quite flexible so I'm guessing when say neurotic so yeah so the big five neuroticism is we're talking about mental illness really and and the truth is severe or untreated mental illness does predict difficulties in relationships and I mean that just is common sense right if you have somebody who is Shifting moods or and I circle with depression so there are periods where I am not myself I am treated I have extremely high insight into it I take responsibility for it I catch it very early and I'm very good at functioning on it but uh on it like a drug which is actually kind of what it feels like it's a temporary State um but that is not easy for me to un without notice kind of shift out of my normal personality for about two weeks until it passes um you can understand how that alone would be difficult now you add lack of insight into that or somebody who isn't managing it or isn't treating it doesn't have a plan in place doesn't really know what it is or is even in denial that's a nightmare that's like having a third party in the relationship it's really or or even it's a lot like substance abuse in a relationship where there is this other thing that is stealing away your partner through periods of time and um it can be really tough if there is an acknowledgement it's just endogenous it's coming from inside if them except from outside as yeah yeah uh but in terms of the flexibility so we want somebody who is yeah we do want somebody relatively stable but I think even with mental illness you can have that stability and ownership and management of it and I think sort of that's the goal is if you have something like uh major depressive disorder which by its nature is a recurring sort of chronic mental illness then is the person managing it is it or is it just this unmanaged kind of chaotic thing that influences the relationship the other part of flexibility and low neuroticism um and the reason I use the word flexibility is because I think more important than the focus on mental illness which I think can get skewed is is this person um open and adaptable is this person somebody who when you're traveling they are an absolute Mar their eyes kind of bug out in the airport they get really weird and snappy um or is this somebody who is relax remember Aiden and Sex in the City never watched I don't know how much talking the Pinnacle of flexibility just you know you don't have your Hostess gave up your table it's just sort of like don't forget us we'll wait outside whatever happens kind of happens very Buddhist non-attachment and I mean truly that's one of the secrets to happiness I would say it's also the secret to happiness in a relationship what's the role of conscientiousness ah that one's my favorite um that's Ro kindness and it doesn't have to look sappy uh my husband is incredibly manly he's Australian he's tall he doesn't talk too much and he can seem um a little bit intimidating I think but he is the kindest most conscientious person he is someone who anticipates your needs incredibly thoughtful but it's not to get something in return it's really the just this caring this unbelievable sustained empathy and caring for others so some he brings me coffee every morning he checks my phone to see if I've made a mistake with my alarm and uh you know he's sort of an add coach with me and he does it with kindness and compassion and just has these little builtin routines that he seems to do effortlessly and um that make me feel incredibly grateful for him all the time throughout the day there are multiple times throughout my day where I reflect actively on how grateful I am for my husband and so you can imagine if you have somebody who is that conscientious that you're just blown away after 10 years every day that kind of gratitude really instills intimacy it creates romance it creates Perpetual Romance and that's why that study that taushiro did he found that these people who had these qualities in their relationships they were reporting higher satisfaction in their sex lives into their 60s and 70s it just continues to grow rather than diminish so this was a longitudinal study that was done in a relatively sort of academic setting yes he did a large scale longitudinal study and um he's fantastic those three traits were predictive conscientiousness which is being a combination of thoughtful and kind uh you know I'm not I don't want to get too into definitions in case I mate something but um the way I understand conscientiousness and there are different personality models right and each personality model and not all not every personality there's really no one personality model that has ever gotten it completely right they've all been dispelled in certain regards but the way that I see conscientiousness as a whole across different personality models is uh it's got a couple of things combined so it's not just nice nice to me can also mean low self-esteem a pushover um trying to be liked conscientiousness may not even look super smiley friendly it's more of an action so to me it is somebody who's smart enough to actually notice and anticipate somebody's needs my husband is incredibly observant and it's something that continues to also bring up admiration so it's got that observational quality intelligence and then also motivation you can't be lazy um and they're industrious they go get things done they're industrious exactly yeah yeah okay that makes sense I was more thinking I was trying to sort of interpret it I guess into the language of Romance but yes if you're talking straight up what is conscientiousness I think good definition uh they are flexible psychologically if there is some sort of perturbant they end up getting back to Baseline in not an insane amount of time if something occurs they're able to adapt to it which is maybe distinct but kind of sounds a little bit like a subset of agency which I would put not too far away from consci agcy right so you want highly agentic partner you so smart ah thank you I'm gonna have to up my game now on a different level um and then uh your final one you want a degree of openness in your experience presumably that's somebody that just doesn't want to sit on their ass all the time it helps to keep things exciting but that is something that you can overshoot for uh and you end up with someone who is going to be very open sociosexual they're going to be looking for high adventurousness predicts cheating yeah correct um so okay those are that's interesting as three traits I guess a question would be uh let's say that you are uh on an early date with someone or you're early into a relationship what are some of the ways that you can adjudicate how much or how little of those traits your partner has you know this is the great question um I learned about these I'm I'm going to speak from my own experience okay so I've experienced this because I knew about these traits before I met Tai and I absolutely intended to try this out uh when I learned about them I was actually uh dating somebody I we were not happy and that person I would say lacked these traits both of us probably lacked these traits to be completely fair but we were in a conference together watching Tai toiro speak about this and I remember sitting there um at this conference not having a particularly good time with the person I was with and thinking I can do this I can follow instructions and the reason I also thought that was because Tai toiro was emphasizing how difficult this is that our evolutionary brains really want so if we're talking about a straight female we want that strong jawline we want uh somebody who's all Brawn we want money we want height we want protection for our young um I and and he actually did this experiment where he had everybody raise their hands if they were a straight male single and so you had about a hundred men in this room raise their hands and he was mimicking the average dating experience so you go online you're straight woman you want a straight man single and then he says so how many of you are between the ages of 35 and 45 so let's say now you've got about 50 hands up and then he said how many of you are Catholic and you've got maybe 20 hands up how many of you make over 200,000 a year you've got I don't know five hands up how many of you are six feet tall one hand so you can see that this completely diminishes our pool so really what he was doing was in fact the book he wrote is called the science of Happily Ever After and he talks about three wishes statistically speaking you'll get married if that's something you want you're going to get married most people in society do but you really get to choose three things guaranteed and then your pool Goes Down And if you want hotness height and money you might have a person who's a complete selfish and that's where you think like are there those problems on that you're going to be able to deal with just because the person's hot in 20 years or are you g to be so sick of their that you don't care how hot they are so that's really what it comes down to so your question was how do we adjudicate this how do we find somebody with these qualities what I can tell you is that um I knew it was going to be hard but I also know that I love science and so if this was as sound as he said it was I could do it and I knew that the biggest thing the biggest thing in my way was just to get rid of that evolutionary urge for hotness the night I met Tai so I broke up with the person I was with that day I moved back to California I immediately got on Tinder this was 2015 so Tinder was kind of it um and I also didn't know what I was doing I was new to apps and got on Tinder I will tell you what with that mindset that I didn't care about hotness money or height I realized there were so many lovely eligible bachelors and so I was just swiping away swipe swipe swipe Ty was one of the first people to respond he was online and so was this male model and uh the male model was that Baseline Instinct in me I was just like and you even though you're putting up a lot of like AB pictures uh I just can't help it so I actually had two contenders I lived this and Ty I didn't know what he actually looked like he was wearing a giraffe costume on his main picture which I thought was funny and there was some pictures of him working but he had like hard hat stuff so I really I had no idea he was hot and Australian and 6'2 I mean I did win in this case but um texting I'm messaging him I'm messaging this other guy Ty is so wonderful and he's just asking me these really intelligent questions um sort of like this conversation right so you're one of those rare ones who has all of those qualities ladies watch out um but he I could just tell he was wonderful and we're talking you can tell if you know what these three things are I could just tell I just needed to be aware of them it was there and he kind of became more of a friend and in the meantime this model is sending me like emojis of wet splashes and asking if I want to massage now granted I was on Tinder I need to be fair but and I kept talking to the model I just couldn't help myself but after about 24 hours I was done with the model guy Tai was just becoming this friend and then something kind of scary happened with my work two weeks later and I realized I wanted to tell my friend about it and that's how it evolved if that's green flags is there an equivalent for red flags are there traits that are highly I yes not being conscientious not being flexible not being open to new experiences a way to look at that but is there a different category of thing to are um traits that people have that are highly predictive of relationships going badly I mean so one of the one of the things where we actually couples therapy is contraindicated as if there is characterological abuse um and what that means I mean so when somebody is engaged in character logical abuse you're usually seeing somebody who is really um interested in power they like to diminish the other person they usually actually have very low self-esteem but you'll see these um little digs and when it's really scary there's a certain type of this person who so that character logical abuse you can think of as a behavior that is tied to somebody's enduring personality so it's behavioral but there is a personality Factor there that is seeking power and control and then there are these subsets of different personality types within that so you can have somebody that is you know waivers between truly trying to be better um but they're so insecure that they're still going to kind of put you down but they don't necessarily get like a calming effect when they Zing you and then there's this very scary kind of Viper personality I think the gans's called it in their research where you actually if you have a pulse oximeter on them they'll Zing the person and their heart rate gets real low after like it just scratched and itch for them they feel better um and then you've just got plain bullies who are going to be that way to everybody and they just sort of it's like a bull in a China chop um and they're just cruel so either way that is a big predictor of an unhappiness um and then there are these you know you can see this a lot of times with the lack of conscientiousness um if you see anything rule or really that is willing to put you out really put you out um without reciprocation I mean this is a really hard thing to quantify it's sort of you know it when you see it but somebody who because they're so obsessed with their car anything that's power related so they're so obsessed with their car being perfect um you matter less than that and so they're going to park almost in a paranoid way like a mile away from the restaurant away from any other car so that nobody dare ding their precious car it doesn't matter that you're going to have to walk in heels um it doesn't matter that nobody is likely going to ding their car they're so obsessed with their things their possessions that you're likely to eventually be a possession to them as well that's interesting do you think there's such a thing as being two different from our partner what are what are deal breaker differences I actually don't I mean well let me uh let me think about this so I think the research would suggest that actually has very little to do with compatibility that's one of those myths and that really what matters is connection uh are you building connection with your partner are you guys attuned to one another's worlds are you being good friends to one another do you manage conflict well um do you check in with each other about what's going on in your Liv so you can have in fact my husband and I are very different in so many ways I always talk about how he's the kind of person who enjoys having a conversation while the TV's on because he's just so excited to socialize I would prefer to disappear into a book or a computer and uh you know he loves to he is just a social butterfly I can do it and I do it for my work and I'm really engaged with somebody when I have that set time to be engaged but uh then I'm done I'm out and for him it is natural he wants to do things all the time I don't um our humor is very very different we like the same music but I think you'll find these kinds of key differences with anyone I mean our careers I'm a psychologist he was working on an oil rig when I first met him uh very different career paths different educational levels there is some research that suggested that people usually marry somebody with a similar educational level and appearance but I don't think that has anything to do with longevity or happiness so it really I mean I would say that the majority of the solid research out there supports and my own relationship would support that is about connection and what you're actually doing to keep the relationship alive yeah it's an interesting one uh I think Opposites Attract might not be entirely accurate but uh you need to have some level of resonance and I think you need to agree on your fundamental principles and values of how you see the world world if you think that a family should be built like X but your partner thinks that a family should be built like y that's probably going to be pretty predictive of things being difficult down the line well I know what you're saying so what you're saying is essentially if you have these key core differences positions on things so whether it's really different views on politics that you feel your partner's view is fundamentally an opposition to your value system right or or value differences spiritual differences M Financial differences those are what are called Perpetual problems and every couple actually has them in fact 70% of every couple's arguments are made up of these arguments around Perpetual problems that will never ever get solved yeah so there are some that I think become more of an issue than others but usually that actually more to do with the way the couple is addressing the issue because underlying these issues are these sort of Dreams or value systems that we have sometimes they're tied to our childhood um let me think of a good example so um let do you have an example for me of somebody who you a couple that would have one of these problems you feel like that would be fundamentally difficult to overcome I think anybody who disagrees about how you should raise a child or the the way that education should be done um looking at how the homes run um you know how the environment is supposed to be run um and expectations around that sort of the the sharing of workload and and and stuff like that um I mean I would imagine that if you have incompatibility in terms of how much sex is the right amount of sex that couples deal with that all the time I would say most couples that come to my office and by the way I have a lot of couples that come in preemptively I have amazing amazing couples and clients who truly just want like you they're very interested in personal growth and learning in optimizing this life so I work with people who are really happily married most people have incompatible sex drives or incompatible normals in terms I have one freaky couple I love and they have always been compatible and it's amazing um it is just some it's a way they connect really well but they are I always say to them like guys you can't tell anybody about this because you're just going to make the rest of us feel bad most people are struggling with some sort of variation in sex drive and in fact every single example you just gave me so different household roles which is also so fascinating because you're naming off you're it's very interesting to me about you how perceptive you are to these things that are actually main areas of research in relationship psychology so roles within the household um the way that we raise children and even roles within the household the handout I have on that where I have couples Circle their ideal roles I mean this is pages and pages of responsibilities or who does what all of these things are actually really manageable and I've had couples manage them differing religions different perceptions on how their child should be schooled different perceptions on how their child should be punished corporal punishment um discipline in how I mean this is normal common stuff and the goal is actually to recognize that these are sometimes unsolvable problems we buy into this myth that we have to solve it to be happy together and in fact I think just like realizing that you're marrying a set of problems is freeing for me because it makes me realize I don't have to keep searching for wondering if there's something better I'm missing I find it freeing to think it is normal to have these recurring gridlock well not necessarily gridlocked but Perpetual issues the goal is to prevent them from being gridlocked issues gridlocked issues are when we feel that our partner is blocking our life's streams because we are not able to talk about it with our partner in a way that is calm or curious and if we can recognize that these different positions we have are rooted in a dream usually from childhood or a value system from childhood um and we can share that story with our partner or even ask better yet ask our partner about that story or what it is without any agenda without trying to persuade them realizing that understanding always has to come before persuasion sometimes when you lift that Veil and realize what it's really about for your partner the actual issue that conflict Falls away it doesn't even really need to be solved because it reconnects the two of you in this way where you realize you're on the same team I'm going to give you an example of that um let's see out of all of those what would you like an example of most um let's do raising let's do a child raising a child schooling the approach that we should have around how this this child should be disciplined rearing rearing of the kids okay I'll pick one of those because each one would be very each one I would essentially work with a couple doing this set of exercises on so let's do whether corporal punishment should be used and um in this case Okay so let's imagine we have a couple and dad is the mom is complaining that uh dad is way too strict that he gets scary when he's when the kids have broken rules that he wants to implement too many rules and dad thinks mom is way too Loosey Goosey woo woo mental parenting and um what happens when we're in these stuck positions right is we start to come up with these criticisms of our partners so she's turning them into spoiled little brats She is totally unscientific woo woo um they're going to turn into you know like I cannot H raise children that are weak or weak willed or don't have character and she's thinking my husband is some um like bully uh you know hyper masculine jerk who is going to starve our children of any emotion and um I don't even like I can't even believe I married this man he is lacking any sensitivity and my children are scared of him and I have to protect God forbid I think maybe I have to step in and protect them imag like that's what you're saying is that would just be a terrible thing to have to manage so now imagine they're sitting there and the husband asks her um is there a fear scenario here for you and she starts crying and saying like yeah I don't ever want my children to be afraid of you and then he asks is there a story behind that for you something from your childhood and she gets really quiet and when she speaks again her voice cracks and she says my household was so violent and nobody did anything about it and it was supposed to be normal and I was scared all the time and I only now have a good relationship with my father and and she's crying and we missed 30 years together and um he's sick and he has so much regret and look at me I have all these problems um I just needed to be loved I felt unsafe my entire childhood my brother's a drug addict um you know it's bad and you know he's not trying to persuade her he's just hearing and then he thinks holy okay so now she I'm thinking less she's like a snowflake and more like oh my god I've been making my wife I completely forgot about my wife's upbringing right and what might be informing her position and then she says the same thing to him um she says you know is there a particular value system here for you or and he says well yeah I mean I am Asian and I my family immigrated here and I have had to try to be something I'm not forever and with you I felt um that you really saw me and wanted my culture and my world to be a part of our family and um what I benefited from growing up was boundaries and discipline and it me my career and I learned so much and I want my children to have opportunities I want them to be successful I don't want them to worry about money and I know what my parents went through to bring us here and I know how hard it was for them to try to build a living make a living um I want my children to have opportunities I don't want them to suffer the way my parents did I want them to have the gifts that my parents sacrificed so much for me to have and she says holy honey here I've been just thinking you're this bully and my God I I missed all of that and she gets up on her knees on that couch and just like wraps her arms around him and then those future discussions get very different right so it becomes less about how are we going to discipline and it doesn't just end there right so after that we bring in some compromise exercises the idea is what are your bones in this situation what can't you compromise on and you get that from that prior discussion right so I can't compromise on my children having an education so they'll have opportunities I can't compromise on my children meeting deadlines and getting assignments done um I can't compromise on my children having a work ethic she can't compromise on her children not being afraid she can't compromise on having a home where um nice voices are used um and then you can see there once we have the bones you can do a lot with that okay so why don't we go in now let's set up some ground ralles where we communicate in this way about it we talk about it at this time we come up with an agreement on how we're going to present something to the kids and then we go with from there so you actually can manage it how much of a circuit break or conversations like this I'm sort of interested in how effectively people can unlearn the way that they typically argue because you have this you have a habit you have a a pattern of bad habits of disagreeing poorly with your partner and it always results in one getting the silent treatment and the other one feeling hard done by or heavily criticized or whatever it is and it's almost like putting on an old leather pair of shoes well this is what we do this is the rhythm of how our disagreement go so what are some of the ways that you can really try to sort of break that frame of this familiar discomfort when disagreeing oh man it is so hard um two things come to mind one I've done this with Tai so when we first started running into initial problems when we were together I think in year two or maybe even year one I dragged him to my mentor and she did did a little bit of a couple's workshop with us and I remember how it felt here I am I am somebody who is doing this to people all day long and I just wanted to sit and I just did not want us to be helped when I had to suddenly be vulnerable um or when he it's hard to break th this specific exercise I would say is probably a little easier than some of the others there are other Conflict Management ones where you're trying to repair a former argument that are much more difficult this one I would say is a little bit easier because you have one person who is asking the questions and one person who is answering and so it keeps it pretty structured it's one of my favorites I think for that reason um but I know what it feels like to not want to do it um and to just want to keep the almost to indulge in the ego in the bad feelings the shadow right um and then your partner says something or just one person does says something true and accept some small piece of responsibility and it's just the ice kind of shatters the worse is when um somebody accepts one small piece of responsibility and the other partner like keeps drilling down on them that's just and that happens a lot in coup's therapy and you're just like I handed you the torch why did you take this opportunity to just destroy this and we have five minutes left so that's brutal I usually will tell couples I I am the ski instructor I'm not here to be judge and jury I am not going to tell you what to do or who's right or who's wrong these principles are classroom skills and I am here to sort of Coach you in using the principles or as a ski instructor if you've ever skied before your ski instructor tells you like one or two little skills and you go down your little pizza slice and you get to do like two turns and then you have to stop and the ski instructor comes after you and you meet and you convene that's what I do in my couples I don't want them going into the forest so it's two turns all right so time out ask her this question and we start really slow and my own husband and I did that and what I can say and what I usually tell friends also is that we did that every week for about a month and then we did it every other week for about two months and then it was once a month for a while and then we did a check-in maybe once a year whenever we had a big blowout fight or running into a rough patch and now we kind of know it but it does work so there's a sense there there's a sense there that uh I think people would assume well if you're having to do counseling or therapy or something in the first year of a relationship that doesn't that doesn't bode very well we're in the honeymoon phase we shouldn't need we shouldn't need to be going to therapy to try and deal with my three-month-old relationship yeah well maybe three months would be too soon but what I will say is that I wish everybody had these skills I think I mean do you want to get me started on my little math rant because we do five years of high school of higher level math and only about 5% of our population will ever go into an engineering or other type of job that uses truly high level math mathematical skill I think math is incredibly valuable for its analytical skill building but I'm not sure we need to take that extra year of calculus I would much I think our society our world given that 96% of the population is going to get married this is one thing we all are going to do rather than a math profession I would I'd say let's trade off that extra year math and teach people how to actually have a relationship because the skills exist we actually do have the blueprint we have the research we have the data it is a class it's enough material to fill an entire year of class and send some kids out there ready to actually do this stuff but I can't help it I actually do believe in the science so after I selected my partner based on science once we were together I was like I mean he knew this is what I do and he is what you're signing up for why do you think it is that people get drawn to Partners that they want to fix it's the I can fix her meme you know I don't know if it's about fixing truly I think it's about earning love I think it's about earning love if you had a parent whose love you had to earn in some way I think that uh we will find ourselves a partner where we still have to get them to uh really care about us does this need for approval that reflects uh a a type of Need for approval that you once had as a child uh oh yeah definitely so if you you know for instance uh if you had a mother who was kind of withholding or critical and uh you're dating uh chances are you're going to find a woman who um you really have to work hard to make her happy and uh or or if your mother was an unhappy person in general and you had kind of a caretaking roller you know you walked on eggshells to cheer her up and keep her from being critical then you've got a double whammy then get somebody who becomes this very dutiful caretaker of their partner um you know accepting constantly taking and just hoping that with more hard work you know they'll take the little crumbs they can get I think it's more about that replicating that feeling of what we understand love to be and that core attachment level when we were kids yeah I I was thinking about this yesterday I wonder if a little bit of it is if you have low self-esteem yourself if that's something that's maybe been bruised in the past and somebody else is treating you in the way that you internally treat yourself that you're observing in this significant other a reflection of the way that you see yourself and that therefore in the pursuit of trying to win the love and acceptance of the person that you are you maybe wonder whether or not that would almost fix what it is that you have internally what it is that you're missing internally it's sort of a misplaced projection with like aspiration for what you want to achieve if oh if I can get them to love me then perhaps and there's this sense of familiarity good enough yeah yeah I'm good enough and I already know that I'm not so they're telling me the thing that I agree with them I agree with I agree with what they're saying I agree with this sense of not feeling good enough yeah and if somebody just loves me outright they must be crazy what would I want to have to do with that person what a weirdo yeah that push and pull you know that Dynamic that very juven sort of immature Dynamic of uh I like someone until they like me back um is it's it's such a common tension that happens in relationships and you know there's a a huge meme apparently on Tik Tok of uh um in a relationship it it needs to be the girl who likes the guy less because that's sort of the only way that he'll remain interested that basically the power in the relationship lies with the person who cares the least that's terrible Tik Tok kills me healthy advice there from Tik Tok it is rough that is rough yeah what's the you mentioned before there about uh sort of a more normal disagreement that you might have with your partner rather than a blowup that you've got in the uh in the counseling session what's the gold standard for how to do rupture and repair well in your opinion good words uh you know my research I mean honestly there's some that when you how wish I had done more research before this call there are some that uh look a lot of times if your relationship is really solid you can let stuff go I can attest to that personally uh Ty and I have been together 10 years now we've done this work and so there are little things we now know each other so well we know each other's vulnerabilities where I know because we've done all sort of the Friendship levels we know each other's world we care about one another we're fond of one another we do nice things for each other if he does something weird or a little bit you know insensitive or says something kind of rude at dinner which nobody else by the way would perceive as rude I know that this is just our own little subtle Dynamic I'm gonna let it go because we're awesome and for the most part it's not a big deal and that's why those basic why friendship is so important and loving someone is so important not not loving them you want to have that fondness and admiration shared between partners in terms of you know let's say he made a second quip at the dinner I would probably not bring it up then because also I don't want to hurt him because I like him and I care about him so I'm not going to embarrass him uh I might give him a squeeze under the table just you know it's like a hierarchy you don't initially need to bring out the big guns but I might give him a squeeze and just be like and he'll know what that means um back in the day before he knew me as well I might have brought it up when we got home and not made a huge like we need to talk but just hey babe I just want you to know like I was a little bit embarrassed when you it felt like you were contradicting me on that story about I don't know relationship counseling whatever it was and uh it just it made me feel a little bit um diminished in front of our friends and I know that wasn't your intention but just be a little bit more aware when I'm talking about something that I'm really passionate about and I can even offer a little bit of background which you start to learn about yourself when you do this kind of talking with your partner I like if I actually think about it it reminds me of how my family never really cared about anything I had to say or anything I was doing or accomplish wasn't real if it was something I was doing so when you kind of were contradicting me it just brought up a big yucky feeling and I know again that wasn't your intention but it's something I'm sensitive to it seems like the most important thing here is that it's on a foundation of very very deep trust that both of you know that you have the others best interests at heart you both uh appear as a team it's us against the world together therefore exactly what it is I love that part by the way it's the difference between you calling a the opposing team member bad name because you want him to miss a penalty are you calling your your own team member a bad name because you think dude you could have done better and like let's do better next time or whatever like the more encouraging equivalent and and that's why in this couple's therapy you actually you don't go to Conflict Management until you've already started to build up the Friendship levels unless you need to repair a betrayal and at that point you you mentioned this a couple of times the Friendship levels what is what is that thank you thank you for uh bringing me back to that so all of this research that I'm talking about besides tied to Shiro is really largely it was done by John and Julie gotman two relationship psychologists who have been at this game longer than anybody else and they have now 50 years of research longitudinal studies the largest sample base of any I I actually find it to be in my mind and this may be something that's arguable but I haven't found anything like it the most researched uh psychological iCal therapy method we have um they developed a method of therapy that is very structured based on their research it happens to be for couples but I think it's the most research therapy we have to date uh so 50 years of longitudinal data on couples and what they found were that these couples who were the most satisfied tit to Shiro's research looked at personality traits the gans's looked at personality traits but more than that these interaction Styles they would have couples go in this room they called The Love lab so it was up in Washington and they had you know double mirrors they had cameras they had pulse oximeters they were doing blood tests they were checking cortisol levels they had in Raiders you know trying to quantify little movements they were seeing or statements or interactions what they eventually came up with and codified they started noticing that the couples who were the most satisfied long long term when they kept revisiting them and these are also couples who didn't divorce um were doing these things and they had really strong friendships they said nice things to one another they anticipated things that were coming up in their Partners life they would talk about their partner's stresses they would check in at the end of the day these were the ones who stayed married and were the happiest over the years and so with all of the information they got including when they saw couples argue how they manage conflict Etc they started to develop this model that they call the sound relationship house and the sound relationship house has a foundation we call them the Friendship levels that starts with love Maps which is knowing your partner's World who's their current least favorite person who is their per current best friend what are they excited about that's coming up what are they dreading um my favorite is what is your partners as of yet unrealized but most preciously held life dream if you know that your partner might not even know that but if you know that a that's super conscientious but also you got love Maps down then you've got fondness and admiration so this is really thinking putting on those rose-colored glasses we actually need them so we need them not only in our relationships we need them for our own mental health people who are depressed actually have a pretty accurate appraisal of things but it's not healthy for us we need a little bit of a cheery Outlook um so are you there's a phrase called like um it's something about the story of the relationship do are they really are they romanticizing the conflict and the struggles they've had are they seeing them as meaningful and purpose-driven um so you want to see that us against the world and then there's the other friendship level of turning toward your partner so when your partner makes a bid for connection if they say hey look at this meme even if you think it's dumb are you going to look up from your computer recognizing that it's not just my partner wants attention they love you so much that when you're on your computer doing your email they are making a bid for reconnection if you think of it like that that's so awesome and so you look up and you look at the dumb meme but you think of how lucky you are to have somebody who loves you that much and you laugh at the dumb meme so turning toward your partner and then on bigger levels it's turning toward your partner when they're bummed when they have a conflict they need to discuss with you with all of that you get that positive perspective so the Friendship levels give you the positive perspective that friendship you guys are on the same team you're going to cheer each other on so that you can deal with the foul play or whatever else it is in a way that's constructive and doesn't just on the person what else was predictive of longevity from the research oh so many things um well let me keep going up the sound relationship house so when you get into managing conflict you really want to avoid the four horsemen and The Four Horsemen were actually the most predictive of a divorce this people get stuck on this especially on Tik Tok as a forum by the way I I've never had so many people get stuck on this fiveyear divorce type thing where so if they do all of these things but they don't get it divorce and years they're okay no no no I mean they might stay together but the idea it just says it's more predictive of a divorce because they're so unhappy if they stay together they're still going to be unhappy um so let's just clear that up and those are one criticism so just putting your partner down right so if I got you know felt undermined at the dinner I would have been like God you're such a story topper you need so much attention you can't just that kind of thing instead of like babe I'm sensitive to this number two contempt contempt is criticism on steroids it is the worst thing for a relationship that's where you're doing that power Dynamic I kind of talked about so it would be really putting somebody down the eye rolling when they talk um name calling diminishing them going global with you're so such a selfish person um you're SLO like you're slovenly did you do anything today do you ever do anything those kinds of things are really contemptuous and they erode not only at the relationship but at the person's self-esteem um defensiveness so that's that hard one where when you're really in it and you're forgetting that person is on your team can you take some small piece of responsibility or validate some small piece of what they're saying just to get you through that barrier it makes all the difference and then Stone falling and this is something that we do when our heart rate gets too high we get physiologically flooded our frontal Lo kind of shuts down and that's actually usually I'm stonewalling when I don't want to validate my partner I'm just I'm done um and that can also be a trauma response if you just uh you know if you grew up in an abusive household or a household where you had very little power and control over chaos you often learn to just like when it got too bad you just go in word because there's nothing you can do about it and uh but you can imagine that if you keep stonewalling your partner and you shut down and you don't engage with them it makes them feel very lonely it's the opposite of connected so all of those four things you do not want to do uh when you're managing conflict if you don't do those and you do the antithesis so I kind of mentioned like accepting a small piece of responsibility calming yourself down physically if you notice your stonewalling um using these sort of reflective listening techniques they're a little bit more than that because you go a little deeper in asking your partner questions but suspending your own uh agenda your own position and learning about why they feel something if you do all of those things now you're through the conflict management if you've done that and you've got the Friendship stuff going now we get into like making each other's life's dreams come true and this is where it's um you know you're building rituals of connection you're finding out what you guys stand for as a couple shared meaning what are what are what do we stand for what does our family stand for this little couple family we have like who are we and that's where you get those couples that just are so special well that's 1 plus 1 equals three right that's sort of a positive sum game where you together become more than you could have ever been a part type thing 100% then you know what that's why I'm really obsessed with the Gman research and this therapy method I mean it is one of the most elegant I've ever seen it is so structured and skills-based um I think I really needed to know there was a blueprint there was a way to do this and what I love about doing this therapy with people is I can do it with service members with severe PTSD and their partner and it's healing both of them individually and as a couple because we are such social beings we are incredibly social creatures so you can have profound individual healing and growth through the relationship in fact I think our relationships are greatest teacher you mentioned how much time we spend learning maths of whichever useless subject that we can't remember any anyway from when we were in school and how little time gets spent learning about relationships but you know maybe you could lay that at the feet of a ineffectually designed designed education system but you're an adult now and you haven't decided to go how many how many times did you go to pickle ball lessons you remember when you did 15 weeks of pickle ball lessons and you went twice a week and you did that class do you remember when you did that and what are you doing with your pickle ball now you still suck whereas your relationship this thing that you know is the single most important decision that you're going to make in your entire life what have you done with that oh you w you you you like watched a couple Tik toks you made a couple of of uh scientifically unsound conclusions from a few Tik toks so yeah I just you know I I do think that this is changing a little bit um the world of personal development personal growth sort of self-development these stuff seems to me to be crossing over into how can I use my relationship as a vehicle to make me my partner our Union and our lives better all together as one big thing it's soic correct that's a perfect way of putting it yeah it's super super efficient um and I guess on the other side of this the personal growth that you get from a how can I alchemize maybe a bad relationship way bad relationships will teach you more about yourself than probably pretty much any other situation in your life um so it is a I get I get I really do understand why people are sort of checking out of dating I don't agree with it but I understand emotionally the motivation for them to do it this protection I've been hurt before this is painful I don't understand so on and so forth but with a tiny little bit of a frame change it just seems to me like there's oh you have the opportunity for the consistently having yeah exactly the the greatest growth periods in your entire life to come off the back of this and then you become better for the next one right um so yeah I it's a it's an interesting it does feel like rolling the dice you know it feels it feels like Risk and people are very risk averse in the modern world so RIS we are we are and yet we're so drawn to relationships we can't help it that's a this is an interesting one I'm going to try and combine a couple of different areas of the stuff that you do so you assess um lingering emotional stress psychological pain stuff like that um how can people expedite relinquishing themselves of that lingering emotional stress and psychological pain but from a relationship standpoint so they've been in a relationship previously and they've developed coping patterns expectations of themselves behaviors habits and they really not only did they not want to see the world in that way they don't want to bring that into the next relationship so what are some of the ways that people can detox from previous relationship patterns that they want to get rid of honestly it's why I dragged Port Thai into my mentor's office when we were dating and we started having problems and I realized I was just we were both stuck in stuff we both had stuff and I knew that we just needed support so I did that and I hate that that's really my answer I hate that that's my answer because it's a paid service I think it's a valuable service but it's not something health insurance covers so um so counseling your answer is your answer is counseling well not just counseling actually because I know a lot of people who go see a therapist for coup's therapy and what few people understand is that couples therapy is minimally taught even in doctoral programs we learn a lot about individual therapy methods we learn a lot about testing and assessment we learn a lot about family therapy Child therapy adult therapy group therapy we might you know brush over some of the goatman's research in a class but you're not getting the real skills to do structured evidence-based couples therapy and and perhaps part of that is because it's not considered a Health Care Service whereas the traditional Psychotherapy model is considered a treatment of a diagnosable illness the problem is though that again 96% of us are in marriages and if you look at Tai toshiro's research the majority of those marriages are unhappy or going to end what should people do if they in your opinion this is not medical advice how where would you direct people for the best evidence-based category of coupl Tru believe you do the Gman method of couples therapy so you're looking for a gotman licensed couple therapist for a therapist who is trained in the gotman method um I strongly support level three training although I know some excellent uh Gman method therapists who are level two trained level one is a great introduction but really I just think the reason that I am so adamant about this is because doing coup's therapy using individual therapy methods is actually a recipe for harming the relationship so this is one of those areas where a therapist who is winging it and just sort of doing therapy with this couple can actually hurt that relationship um pretty quickly you mean two people separately going to psychotherapy doing the normal talk therapy thing no so if you have a a couple a therapist who isn't trained in the method trying to do therapy with a couple and calling it couples therapy and that's most therapy that couples go to they go to coup's therapy and I always am I try to sort of suspend my was it a therapist trained in the G method because sometimes I feel like I am like a walking advertisement and by the way everyone I am trained in this method but I have no paid affiliation with them whatsoever I just this is the most evidence-based method we have in general and it happens to be for couples we also know that because of these findings that if you just unload all of your criticism onto your partner because you're doing a traditional therapy approach that is meant for individual therapy where it's sort of open Talking reflective listening if you're unloading your criticism and your contempt and all of your anger is flowing and we're using this sort of like Let It Out approach those are all things these are the four hor so you're going to get defensiveness and you're going to get stonewalling and you're going to burn more of that bridge rather than rebuild the connection it's actually harmful so I think it can be a waste of time and money and I think it can actually harm the relationship more than it helps which is why I just if you are going to somebody who is trained and strictly utilizes the evidence-based gotman method you are you're going to have a greater likelihood of actually improving the relationship so I'm pretty adamant about that where I would send people is to the Gman Institute online it's a website so from there you can find individual or you can find couples therapists for private therapy if that's something you want they have the Gman referral Network some gotman providers though are not on there so I'm not on there um they're excellent people you can find word of mouth as well um but gotman referral network is a good place to start if you aren't able to find somebody who is covered by your insurance and budget is a major concern which it is for most people the Gman Institute has created some really awesome software programming and this really started during the co era and it's gotten better ever since so they have affordable apps that you can use they have um uh videos of their trainings that you can utilize and then structured guidelines for practicing on your own there is something amazing about having a ski instructor though right to help you down that mountain but these skills are out there so you can learn them and it does take a little bit more commitment because you don't get to just sit and like I did in that room where my mentor who is wonderful and loving and wise had to coax me out of being a brat so that I could participate fully so you have to be a little bit more of a grownup but I think it can be done I love it um I guess final something we haven't spoken about is breakups and is there anything to say from an evidence-based perspective on what getting over a breakup looks like is that is that even an area of research it is and it's pretty fascinating oh I should have brushed up on this one uh this one has a lot to do with Neuroscience in fact I bet huberman could tell you a lot on it and it actually I would listen to that in a heartbeat but uh what we do know is that people actually have a uh drug withdrawal like response to a breakup so you are you were getting this oxytocin from the love relationship and also from the familiarity there are a couple different reasons for this when you're in a relationship you have these patterns of things you do with your partner and if you were very close and together for a long time there's a the stress of disentangling your lives and if you have to move that's one of the most stressful life events there is is a relocation so you're dealing with that then you also had you know breakfast together on Sundays or TV day on Saturdays when you're both wiped or hung over or uh you know you'd go to your parents on Sunday afternoon or you whatever those little rituals were you had them and they were built in now you're going to have these empty pockets of time that aren't filled with these familiar Comforts so that's disrupting as it is and stressful but on top of that you're not getting the physical touch and intimacy you're not getting the romantic love if you're in the early stages of the relationship and so you're actually having um this withdrawal syndrome and it's going to feel a lot like drug addiction there are a couple different things you can do recognizing that when you are addicted to drugs when you're going through you start to your body wants more of that drug it wants that hit of oxytocin and so you're going to start anzing and thinking wholly about that thing you want and that means you're going to idealize the relationship you're going to idealize your ex and it's just the way you would start to obsess about that drug so what do we have addicts do when we know that they're going to start idealize the drug they're going to start having cravings we have them remember they counter that thought with a thought about what they have to lose and we might counter it also with a memory of rock bottom and so you have to a recognize that these are fantasies they are not realistic these are idealizations of something that isn't true and so you take those rose-colored glasses off the ones that we want you to have on the whole relationship you take them off and you remember what it was like um the time he left you in the parking lot and you didn't have a way to get home or uh I don't know you you think of the worst times and then you also need to find positive activities to fill those empty Pockets so where somebody was using in the past now they have to you know call their sponsor or they go do something enjoyable like workout do the same thing when you used to do brunch with your partner or um whatever else it was that is making you miss them suddenly so call a friend go to brunch with a friend I I have this weird thing where I love cheap magazines it to me it's like doesn't harm you because it's not junk food and it's kind of a quick fix and I can look at fashion and stuff and as long as I don't shop I love that as like a quick hit of oxytocin uh just gives me a little thrill everybody's got one of those weird little things so you plan ahead you got your magazines ready whatever it is and you start filling those empty spaces and then third you also need to recognize that as you get more tired in the day your executive functioning decreases so that same frontal Lo that you need to manage an argument effectively with your partner you also need that to exercise any good judgment and to remind yourself of why you broke up with a person that's why you might notice like you Pine a little bit more for your ex at night or you uh call them at night or you just get you know nighttime is never great as soon as you start to get tired and your frontal Lo Globe goes down you're just going to be a little bit less reserved a little bit less controlled a little bit less aware of all the good reasons you made this smart decision so go to bed right this the answer a lot of problems just go to bed yeah and put your phone away no that that it's very interesting I actually asked huberman this question about probably about three years ago and um he started talking about the neuros signs of grief so he said that the way that it works with grief is there is a an area of our brain which is expecting our ability to connect with that person and that has been taken away don't mind me I can send you the I can send you the link to the that would actually be much I just had this urge to start taking notes okay yeah yeah the profession the professional ner in the room is supposed to the unprofessional nerd um yeah basically that it's it's like grief right that you've lost somebody that they're dead but the unique pain that you get from a breakup is that the person is still accessible uh maybe they don't care about you anymore they with maybe they maybe you left them and you've got this sense of guilt and there is still going to be this sense of missing existential Miss of it all yeah like imagine imagine a type of death where somebody dies but you can get them back briefly but you have to pay a very high price in order to do it you can do that over and over and over and over again so he it's his opinion I think that from a sort of neurobiology perspective you're looking at the same pathway way that you get in grief um and yeah definitely and that is a known thing um although it's fascinating to hear his neurological perspective so from my framework the psychological framework we just talk about how difficult and complex this emotion is this loss is it's a it's complex sort of bereavement because it's not simple it's not just an a loss of a person they still exist they complex feelings of jealousy or diminishment or guilt as you said if you were the one who ended it is nonetheless a loss and a lot to learn and navigate with that um I am reminded of Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat Pray Love the book and um I don't know if any of your listeners will be familiar with it especially if it's a primarily male audience but there is this incredible part in the end um she actually went so in this book she's navigating a really brutal divorce from somebody who she loves very much but they uh grew apart they gotten married young and her life as she says is you know it's unimaginable to even imagine staying together yet unimaginable to imagine splitting up they do split up and um at some point in this she goes to an asham in India and she devotes herself to spiritual practice brutal spiritual practice like meditation on her knees for eight hours of meditating and imagining somebody she wishes well to and health to um and then at one point she realizes she still has this cloying pain this wound from the loss of her marriage um which she nonetheless initiate initiated but this absolute grief deep in her soul and anybody I think who has been divorced or has gone through one of these um major losses of Love Can attest to this it it can feel like a cancer in you that just lingers and uh she is a friend of hers recommends that she goes up to the roof of the well he recommends that she meditate and uh essentially talk to him in that state and uh at risk of sounding a little too woo woo what I will say is that she has this profound Peak experience in a meditative State and feels that um she's able to that separation is not so finite as we perceive and that she was able to connect to him uh mentally whether it was psychological spiritual um and there was a wisdom there that she was also able to connect with where she realized that none of this was bad and that on a much larger level it was all okay and so she a cart wheels off very relieved and happy that secretly not so secret anymore is a passage that I'll give to some of my clients who are navigating devastating devastating heartache where the contact has been cut um and it just feels so painful and empty and it provides I think a little bit of an Avenue for uh reconnection or healing is isn't it funny what just you know shaven primates trying to make sure that the Next Generation comes along um and all of this stuff comes for the ride you just have these complex psychological mechanisms and you know what about your childhood what about the inner voice and where that's come from and got to think about you know the foundation of the house needs to be friendship first and then going to do the thing it's like hey dude I'm a grandchild optimizing machine that has become self-aware like I'm like I'm like chat gp9 or something and uh I did we ask for this I don't feel like I asked for this and um it's it's but this is why it's interesting it's interesting because you know the idea of spandrels you must know the idea of spandrels oh okay so um it's I don't know whether the word actually exists outside of psychology but it exists the best example is you're an alien that comes down to earth and you look at a light bulb and some used to say what's the job of an old school style light bulb one from 50 years ago theyd say what's the job of that light bulb you say it's obvious the job of the light bulb is to give off heat look at how much heat it's G off MH they go interesting interesting comment no job of the light bulb is to give off light that heat is a byproduct so we didn't mean to give off the heat but in order to give off the light we gave off the heat and uh it's kind of kind of like the entirety of everything that we're dealing with here spandrels they're all just spandrels like that we've had to try and find ways to compensate and work around you know a very ungainly God when it came to him designing the sort of way that men and women interrelate I mean it was he was tired it's sort it's late on a Saturday afternoon he's had an edible and you know you're thinking you really this bit you know there was some slickness look at the beauty of a swordfish swimming through the sea and like you know the the sort of Majesty of the nighty there's this Simplicity and all the rest I do the same thing I compare a cool animal to us and I was like man God had way more fun with this one like maybe this was in the beginning of the project where he you know was a little more grandiose about it and excited and spending more time and detail on something having fun with it and then in the end he really had to rush it toward the end it's like I've got so many slack I've got so many slack notifications yeah my Trello board is a nightmare um and that that honestly that second edible is looking really good so I'm just going to send this and hope for the best you know this the code that you wrote this with is a little bit messy it's yeah it'll be fine so no I um look Dr Shannon Curry ladies and gentlemen I really appreciate you um it's fascinating to look at the world of relationships through uh an evidencebased lens is is really really unique so where should people go they want to keep up to date with everything you do um you can check out my website C psychology.com or Instagram I'm working on getting more content up there lately so it's Curry Psy group back yeah Dr Curry I appreciate you I'll see you next time all right thanks so much Chris do you think that your algorithm on YouTube is a bit of a God is able to know things about you that you don't know about yourself well the YouTube gods have selected this episode specifically for you bespoke so go and go and check it out